SMU's Pony Express rides again in ESPN film

Rise and fall of SMU football cast in new light

DAVID BARRON, Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle |
December 6, 2010

DALLAS — Twenty-five years after the final charge of the Pony Express, there’s a touch of Mustang mania in the air.

Even though SMU lost Saturday in the Conference USA Championship Game to Central Florida, the Mustangs (7-6) have qualified for a bowl game for the second consecutive season and will host Air Force in the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl. It will be the first back-to-back bowl seasons for SMU since 1982-84 and only the third back-to-back run in school history.

Thursday night, Mustangs coach June Jones briefly joined more than 650 SMU football fans and former players who crowded into a Dallas theater to watch Pony Excess, an ESPN documentary about SMU’s glory days of the 1980s and its subsequent disgrace through the imposition in 1987 of the NCAA death penalty, thanks to a runaway pay-for-play plan funded by rogue boosters and countenanced by university officials, including former Gov. Bill Clements.

Today, Craig James and Eric Dickerson, the 1-2 punch of SMU’s Pony Express from 1979 through 1982, are back together in Bristol, Conn., to publicize Pony Excess. The film, directed by SMU film school graduate Thaddeus Matula, premieres at 8 p.m. Saturday on ESPN after the Heisman Trophy presentation.

SMU football in the 1980s — from the ups of Southwest Conference titles in 1981 and 1982 and a co-championship in 1984 through the disgrace of the cheating allegations and the death penalty’s impact on the university and, indirectly, the Southwest Conference — has become a forgotten footnote to fans outside the Southwest, even at time when pay-for-play allegations still infect the game as with the case of Heisman Trophy favorite Cam Newton of Auburn.

In that sense, Pony Excess will bring back memories for older fans and provide a valuable history lesson to younger fans who know SMU football only as a perennial doormat.

"It’s a story that needed to be told," said John Dahl, executive producer of ESPN Films. "It’s a big story that our audience, I don’t think, will see coming. I think they’ll be surprised and impressed by the amount of detail that they will see."

For a time this spring, James wasn’t sure what to think about Matula’s plans to document the Pony Express era. He has long been concerned that football fans have linked him and Dickerson directly to the back-to-back probations that killed the SMU program in 1988-89, even though those cases took place after both men left Dallas and focused on misdeeds committed by and on behalf of Pennsylvania lineman Sean Stopperich and Angleton linebacker David Stanley. (Both men have since died, Stopperich in 1995 and Stanley in 2006.)

James, however, is satisfied that Matula told a fair, unvarnished story that highlighted the good and the bad of SMU football in the ’80s.

"The headline for me is how much I learned about things that went on after I had gone," James said. "I never saw David Stanley or never met Sean Stopperich. It’s a nice tale of redemption, of a program that went to the death penalty and is now competing for a conference championship. It took a long time, but it’s nice to see how they’ve come back — how we’ve come back."

James has long maintained he went to SMU to accompany his girlfriend, Marilyn Arps, to whom he has been married for 28 years. He also acknowledged in his book Game Day, "I’m not going to sit here and tell you I never received a nickel during my playing days. But I can say with certainty that no benefits were ever extended to me from anyone associated with the SMU administration."

Dickerson has been less forthcoming about his exploits in that regard, and Pony Excess devotes some time to a car that Dickerson acquired during his senior year at Sealy. Steve Endicott, an assistant to SMU coach Ron Meyer, claims in the film that a Texas A&M booster made the down payment on the car and that the Meyer regime helped Dickerson pay for the vehicle when he opted to attend SMU.

The film also includes a clip in which former Endicott says SMU offered $20,000 to Mark Lewis, a tight end from Kashmere, and that Lewis, who signed with Texas A&M and later played in the NFL, replied, "Coach, that’s not even close."

James said Pony Excess "was satisfying, gratifying, comforting closure that publicly people will now see other folks recognizing why I went to SMU. I have said forever that I was following my girlfriend … and hopefully now that will come true and clean for most people.

"As for my era, I learned a lot about my teammates. I had no idea what they were doing. I had my head in the sand. I really did. I didn’t know what was going on because I never asked. It wasn’t my business. I just did my thing."

James, however, said the film does not make him think more harshly about his SMU teammates who accepted benefits in violation of NCAA rules.

"It’s a long time ago to judge somebody," he said. "We were a bunch of teenagers, a bunch of young guys placed inside a very fast lane. I’m sure I probably speak for anybody that you would like a few do-overs from what you did when you were 18, 19 years old."

Among the former SMU players attending the Thursday screening were Mike Ford, the Mustangs’ 1979 starting quarterback who was replaced during the 1980 season, and the man who replaced him, Lance McIlhenny, who led the Mustangs to a 10-1 record in 1981 and an 11-0-1 record and a Cotton Bowl win in 1982.

Ford, who lives in New Mexico, walked to the stage of the Lakewood Theater, where the screening took place, and shook McIlhenny’s hand as he left the building.

"This film shows that we weren’t the only ones playing the game (of NCAA violations). We just got caught," Ford said. "I truly, with all my heart, know that I can prove and will go to my deathbed knowing that.

"I’m not sure that if the NCAA had the most blatant case of infractions in the history of God that they would ever do the death penalty again. It not only ruined a school and a town of college football, it ruined a conference. I played pro ball and met kids all over the country, and nothing changed them any more than what happened to us changed us."